Except where a clearing had been made for the camp, and where ran the narrow tote road, towered tall pines, doomed to fall as the choppers worked their way from the borders of the tract to its center. Here the snow had fallen deep and without drifts, such as the travelers had seen in the more open country. Sam shivered a little. The cheerful and vociferous boss had followed his charges into the cabin, and, of a sudden, the watcher was oppressed by the silence and the loneliness of the woods. Instinctively he took a step toward the main door of the camp; halted; listened intently. Then he heard again, and with certainty, the sound which he had half believed a trick of imagination. It was the crunch of dry snow under a hurrying foot. Sam strode forward. As he turned the corner of the building, he caught sight of a figure moving obliquely toward the runner tracks leading to No. 2 camp. In spite of the low-drawn cap and the rough Mackinaw he recognized Orkney. “Slipped out of a back door, and around the other side of the camp and started for another get-away,” he reflected. “Bound not to be seen, if he can help it. Thunder, but he is as stubborn as they make ’em!” Orkney was in haste, but Sam pursued still more rapidly. The tote road bent sharply to avoid a great boulder. Orkney vanished around the bend, without giving evidence that he suspected he was followed; but when Sam passed the big rock, and thus shut himself from view from the camp, he beheld Orkney, faced about and standing defiantly in the middle of the road. Sam, too, pulled up. For a moment neither boy spoke. Sam advanced a pace. Orkney contented himself with holding his ground. “Well, what do you want?” he growled. “You,” was Sam’s terse response. “Cut out the guff! I’m in a hurry.” Sam took another step forward. “See here, Orkney! I’ve got things to tell you. You made a mistake when you bolted.” “That’s my own lookout. I’m satisfied.” “I’m not.” “Huh! It’s no affair of yours.” “I tell you it is,” Sam insisted. “Helped drive you out of town, didn’t I?” “What’s that? ‘Drive me out?’” snorted Orkney. “Not much! Nobody drove me--least of all you and your gang of swelled heads!” Sam kept his temper. “Might as well face things as they are. You ran away because everybody was down on you, because everybody cut you, because----” “Not on your life!” Orkney broke in fiercely. “I don’t care a rap for the whole school or the whole town!” “All the same you couldn’t stand the gaff. So you turned tail and bolted. And here I find you a wood-chopper and----” “No siree! Can’t you get anything straight? I’m cookee. Know what that is? Cook’s helper. Or, rather, I was. I’ve quit the job. I’m moving on.” “You’re running again--from us!” “I’m running from nobody. But I don’t choose to stay where a lot of prying sneaks are butting in.” Sam took another step. This proffering of the amende honorable was proving to be even more difficult than he had feared, but he kept himself in hand.